


I can read you like a book.

by KayRachaels9



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Continuation in the end notes, F/M, Fix-It, Getting to Know Each Other, Honesty, Hurt Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Hurt Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Post-Canon, Post-Reveal Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Post-Season/Series 03, Spoilers for everything through season 3, They Talk Everything Out, everything, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-02-23 09:57:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23709691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayRachaels9/pseuds/KayRachaels9
Summary: The reveal happened accidentally, and they really need to talk about it. So, they're not leaving Mari's room until everything is on the table.The only thing is, ever since the reveal, they're so in tune they can practically read each other's minds. Nobody's hiding anything.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 10
Kudos: 315





	I can read you like a book.

**Author's Note:**

> This is totally just me indulging myself as I need these kiddos to finally just figure everything out. There's a little after scene in the endnotes too.

Neither of them could be blamed, the reveal had been a complete accident, nothing they did would have been able to change it.

Sure, they probably should have taken the time to talk about it, but it was getting a bit late for that now. It’d been two days, and the one thing nobody could have prepared Marinette for was the intimacy that came with knowing her partner. No, they weren’t dating, they were hardly even talking. Could they have carved out the time for this much-needed discussion? Definitely. Were they both avoiding the situation? Pretty much.

No, the intimacy that shocked Marinette, was the way she could read Adrien like a book. She didn’t even have to talk to him at all, she just knew what he was thinking half the time she looked at him. She recognized Chat’s behaviors in him, and she was so used to communicating with Chat without needing to speak. It was almost frightening to suddenly know Adrien this deeply.

If she listened to the conversations he was a part of, she could predict in advance every laugh, false smile, and hidden nervous tick he was going to produce. In class today, it’d almost been like a little game she’d play with herself to see how often she’d get it right. 

Was that why they weren’t talking? They didn’t need to now? Or because they were both scared to find out the other could do the same? Could he? She had to be pretty obvious in the way she watched him over the last two days, wouldn’t she have noticed if he was doing the same?

He was definitely aware of her presence, she could see it in the way he leaned slightly further back in class now. Like he was listening behind him and making sure she was still right there. Like she was the thing keeping him grounded in the classroom.

Maybe right now they were both just working to keep from shattering their closely held illusions of the other. Adrien was perfect and Ladybug was perfect, and if they looked any further they might realize that wasn’t true. But they’d both known the other wasn’t perfect, hadn’t they? Adrien didn’t have a clue about how friendship was meant to work, and he let Chloe walk all over him, and he didn’t do anything to change Lila’s behavior. Ladybug had a fierce temper and would let emotions cloud her judgment, she was too quick to become angry with Chat and too slow to forgive him. She always had him take the blame for their arguments, even when she realized later that she was in the wrong, she never apologized and took the blame for their situations. It wasn’t that they were too perfect. 

Mme. Bustier’s class finished out and Marinette hadn’t heard a thing. Should she try and stop him during lunch, should she continue to let things be?

She walked to the lockers with Alya, dropping off her books before she left. The boys were directly in front of them, Adrien was speaking, but she could tell he was still listening, making sure her footfalls stayed behind him, never straying too far.   
Marinette watched as Nino led Adrien back to where they were, hoping that the four could at least walk together on the way to his car. Great, forced interaction, yesterday they had done a great job of avoiding each other, not because they didn’t want to be near the other, just because they didn’t want to be near the other while they were with their friends. Today, it seemed, that wouldn’t be the case. 

“Adrien, did Marinette show you her latest design? This one really is stunning. It’s a skirt that’s similar to the bowler hat you modeled for her. You should go to her place so she can show you,” Alya attempted her hand at matchmaking just as she always had.

“Alya,” Marinette glared her down fiercely, communicating the way only best friends could. It was one thing when she was desperately working on her crush, it was another thing when their relationship was hanging on by a thread and neither of them was doing anything about it.

“Oh,” she heard, still slightly distracted by her staredown.

“Actually, it’s funny you mentioned her designs Alya,” he rubbed the back of his neck turning his gaze towards Marinette, and she knew he had read her the way she’d been doing the last couple days. “Marinette, I was hoping you might be able to help me with a project, I could ask Nathalie to let me over your house after school.”

That was it, they were going to discuss it. All of it, he knew about her crush now, he’d seen it in the way she communicated with Alya, but he still wanted to talk, that was a good sign.

Actually, they didn’t need signs, she looked into his eyes and it was like they’d had a whole conversation. He’d be there, he was glad they were going to talk, he was definitely going to tease. She’d end up okay. 

Alya nudged her arm, “oh, yeah, that should work,”

“Great,”

“Your car is here dude, I’ll see you at our next class, all right?”

“Yep, see you,” he unhooked his gaze from Marinette’s and made his way towards the car. 

Marinette ran on autopilot through lunch and the remainder of her classes. She dealt with Alya’s pestering, never giving her a second thought and acutely tuned in to everything Adrien did until it was time for them to leave. She knew they’d be fine, she just couldn’t predict what would happen before they got to that point. 

“Want to ride with me?” Adrien asked, headed to open the car door for her, “I know we’re only headed across the street, but my bodyguard won’t let me walk and you may as well join since we’re going to the same place,”

“Okay,” she said.

[You have until 7 pm.] Marinette read the text Adrien showed her. Nathalie didn’t seem to bother with pleasantries—she was also shockingly punctual as the text arrived the second they both stepped into her room.

She nodded curtly. “So, you wanted to talk?” 

“Well, I think we need to,”

“Do we?” She curled up in her desk chair while he took his place on her chaise.

“Maybe?”

“Then how come we hadn’t earlier?” She didn’t know why she was upset, she hadn’t made an effort either.

He knew their lack of talking wasn’t what had been upsetting her, so she could see as he settled on the reassuring route. “Cause we were in shock, it takes a little while to reconcile everything. Not even just our identities, but that the choice to share them was taken away from us. We had no way to prepare and no way to back out, suddenly it was all there. It didn’t even end at that, we’re so used to each others’ silent cues and watching our backs that all of our civilian focus is being taken up by the other. I think we’ll be trying to adjust for a while.” 

“Yeah, it seems like this is taking a lot more work than we’d expected.”

“I’m starting to think it would have always been that way.”

“You’re probably right,” She looked at him, she didn’t need to try and figure out what words would convey her scrambled thoughts, he’d always been good at sorting out her messes. 

He knew. She was scared. Meeting Chat was meant to be safe, someone she could work into her schedule when she was comfortable, someone she could reveal herself to slowly, letting him find out more about her one piece at a time. But Adrien already knew, he’d heard her talk to Alya about her hopes and dreams, he’d seen her blunders as she tried to talk to him, and there was so much he learned about her even today that it’d make sense if she were scared just because of that. 

Not only that, but he knew that she had no idea what they were doing right now. This felt far outside the realm of her typical careful planning, she needed him to step up and tell her what was going to happen next.

“Okay, so this all feels earth-shattering, and somehow we’re going to need to rebuild. But at this point, it’s not worth building on a broken foundation, it’ll only give us issues later. It may feel more comfortable not to have to start from scratch, but if we don’t address everything now, the next time we’re shaken, the foundations will be exposed once again. So we’re going to work it through from the start.”

“How do we do that?”

“Total honesty, everything from day 1 until now,” He looked at her and she realized he meant now. No time to brace herself, she’d start filtering if he let her wait. He wanted her to start recapping, and from day 1, probably one of the most vulnerable days of their whole superhero career. This totally wasn’t fair, especially as everything she thought was being given away the longer she looked at him, he’d know if she wasn’t being honest.

“Day 1, I suppose we first met when I crashed into you, we fought Stoneheart, I totally failed, thought about giving up on being a hero, tried to give the miraculous to Alya, you showed up at school, I thought you put gum in my chair and were going to be a Chloe clone, Alya wound up in danger, I had to get the miraculous back in order to protect her, I almost gave up again when the police told me we’d failed, you told me to trust you, convinced me I was cut out for the job, Stoneheart was defeated, you apologized for the gum despite it being me who should have apologized for my quick judgment, and suddenly life was back to normal for a few days.”

“You- you tried to give up your miraculous?” She caught a small crack in his voice.

“Yeah, I thought I was going to be a hindrance to you and that I wasn’t good enough to save Paris. Now it all seems a little silly, but now I know what I’m doing. Back then I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to figure it out.” She could see him thinking through everything they’d have lost if she hadn’t been Ladybug, all the memories that wouldn’t exist. It hurt him to realize how close it came to being a reality.

She got up and sat next to him on the chaise. She laid her arm over his shoulder and rested her head over that. “Now it feels like losing a piece of myself to give up being Ladybug and working with you, but back then I was trying to do what would be best for everyone.”

“I understand that—you already know I do, it just hurts to think I could have lost you that easily.”

“I’m familiar with that feeling, you want to do honesty, I’ve watched you die, I’ve seen you erased from existence, in another reality, I saw you akumatized. Worse than that, I’ve had to choose Paris’ safety over you numerous times, and every time it kills me. I know my cure is supposed to bring you back, but,” she choked her words back, she didn’t want to say it, he could see it—every time there’s that worry that I won’t be able to do the job on my own and that one day I won’t get you back.

“25,913 times I walked through the same thing, and I think not having talked about it is just a bigger part of what drove us to this point. It takes a while to truly believe the other is okay, we might see each other for a minute or two once the battle ends, but it takes a few battles to convince us, and by then we’re already running into other issues.”

“You’re right,” she whispered, “I think seeing you run around Paris during nighttime patrols has been the only thing keeping me sane.”

“I don’t even get the chance to see that, but with all of those memories, it’s no wonder we didn’t start talking sooner. When the masks fell off and we saw someone we knew, someone who mattered to us, it was like realizing we could have lost each other twice.”

“So what do we do about it?”

“Well, just seeing each other at school now should be enough of a reassurance that the other is safe, spending the whole day that close, being able to hear the other speak. We can probably even come up with a system, like a playful shoulder nudge that comes across as nothing, but we know it’s actually being used as a reassurance that this is real and that we are finally safe, that we wanted physical proof the other was there and they weren’t going to disappear. But that’s all rebuild, I think we’ve got more stuff we’re still hiding.”

“Is there something specific you’re looking to hear?” She lifted her head trying to see what he might be searching for. 

He blushed a little and then she knew, “well, I may have been able to read your expression pretty well when you were shooting daggers at Alya,”

She buried her head back in his shoulder, “You’re going to make me say it?”

“Well, you know I fell in love with my partner on day one, I may be interested in hearing about the reason she turned him down,”

“Coincidentally enough, I fell in love with my partner on day one as well, not that I knew that until the other day,”

“You did?”

“Yeah, I may have left out a little bit of day 1 in my earlier recap, it actually went: you apologized for the gum despite it being me who should have apologized for my quick judgment, and suddenly, when you handed me your umbrella, you were so honest and so vulnerable at that moment. It wasn’t the son of my design idol, or this new kid, or this friend of Chloe’s looking at me, it was this sweet boy who wanted to make friends, and he cared what people thought about him, and he cared how they felt. I started stammering when I tried to say goodbye and was never able to be myself around you after that,”

“You were scared I was going to judge you or something?”

“I was scared I wasn’t going to be good enough for your world, that people would have thought I was using you to get ahead, that I would have to tell my partner that my heart had no room to be won, that I’d have this secret to hide from you, that my clumsiness would bring down our relationship, that I wouldn’t have nearly as many qualities for you to love,” she grew quieter, afraid of how he might respond.

“Gosh, you’re an idiot, how could the Marinette DuPain-Cheng, class president, designer, everyday ladybug, the kindest, most unfailing, most caring, loving, sacrificial person I’ve ever met, think she wasn’t worthy of being loved by some dumb kid at her school?”

“Because the Adrien Agreste is also the kindest, most unfailing, most caring, loving, sacrificial person I’ve ever met. You have enough determination for all of Paris and you do so much for the people around you,”

“You’re exactly the same way,”

“This sounds like an awful lot of building back up, shouldn’t we still be figuring stuff out?” She was deflecting, she didn’t want to believe that his words were truthful.

“Consider this us taking a break to search through the rubble and find any materials worth saving for our rebuild,”

She knew he was proud of thinking that up so quickly. “What about you, anything I should know?”

“Well, my whole life everyone has made decisions for me, and while my mom was nicer about it, there’s a reason I never went to school and still stuck to a strict modeling schedule before she disappeared. I don’t like being kept in the dark as Chat because he’s supposed to let me escape my everyday life, but instead, it feels like the bars holding me in as Adrien are stuck in place even when I become Chat.”

“That makes sense, I just didn’t want to put anyone in unnecessary danger, but there are definitely some things you should know now. I’ll introduce you to each of the miraculous holders, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to let them transform again, now that Hawkmoth knows their identities. I lost something in that battle, the previous guardian and I had copied pages of the grimoire we found in your father’s possession. That’s how we were able to make the potions to give enhanced powers to Tikki and Plagg. I stole that book by the way, Lila had stolen it from you and hid it when she thought you were going to find out, then I took it from her. I returned it, saying that it was me who had taken it all along, but that’s why you didn’t have it anymore. I don’t have it anymore either. Master Fu and I had decoded everything, but I haven’t seen it since becoming a guardian.”

“The new guardian, huh? We never really talked about it, that’s got to be a lot.”

“It is, I don’t know what I’m doing at all, but Wayzz has a lot of wisdom from being around Fu for so long, he tries to help me find my way. It also helps that I’ve used every miraculous so far, so I know each of the kwamis and how the powers are meant to work. Which, I suppose is one more thing for you to know, I’ve wielded every miraculous except for the turtle, all of them at the same time. You seeing me as Multimouse, that was an illusion I made up, I’d really been wearing every miraculous I had access to at the moment. The illusion was to keep my identity a secret. As soon as you left I dropped everything and fixed it all for real. I know it was dangerous and stupid, and I could have gotten hurt or lost my mind or been corrupted by power, but Tikki and Plagg were gone, and I had to get them back.”

“So, once more I could have lost my partner?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s a part of the job description, it’s always going to be dangerous, and we’ll always have to put Paris before ourselves. I don’t always like it, especially when it means sacrificing you, but we can’t prevent it either.”

He shook his head, convincing himself it wasn’t worth arguing, “what else?”

“Honestly, I’m running out of superhero drama, but there is probably some Marinette and Adrien stuff too. Like, I made that scarf that was supposed to be from your father, and the berret you thought was from your fan club in Brazil. I also took your Valentine's day poem from the trash and I stole your phone after leaving an embarrassing voicemail. Oh, and I teamed up with Chloe to try and embarrass Kagami because I was jealous, and I snuck into your house dressed as a guy that time you had a party. And I didn’t show up to your rooftop date because I was upset Adrien never came to get sweethearts’ ice cream after school.”

“Is that all?” he teased. 

“Wait, I just remembered, when you caught me on the roof that one time, I had just detransformed and I thought you were going to realize I was Ladybug so I lied and said I liked you, hence you coming over and us battling Weredad.”

“That actually makes a lot of sense. I’d always thought you liked Luka so I was having trouble rectifying the idea that your crush was on Chat.”

“Ugh, don’t you have anything else you can share?”

“Well, one time I was jealous cause this other guy liked you, so I pretended we were dating and that’s how Copycat started. And Gorzilla was because I ran away from my bodyguard. I told a civilian I was too scared to face the akuma so they dressed up as me and I ran off to transform into Chat. Bubbler wasn’t really my fault, it was more on my behalf, but I’m kinda responsible for that. Same goes for Party Crasher, Nino threw the party, I didn’t think to invite Wayhem after everyone had shown up and he didn’t like being excluded.”

“My list seems a lot longer after that,”

“But you’ve always fixed everything and apologized for your role in the situation. I’ve seen you do it as Ladybug and as Marinette.”

“It’ll never make it right though, I should be better at keeping myself in check, I mean, I understand the consequences of this stuff better than anyone.”

“So then work to become better, you can’t change what happened before, and it won’t help you to sit and be upset about it. Move forward, and work to prevent it from happening again.”

“I found myself paired up with a pretty smart kitty.” She gave him a friendly scratch on the head with the arm she hadn’t been resting on.

“So where are we now?”

“I can’t think of anything else, I’m sure we need to discuss some of the stuff that was shared earlier, but I think we’ve addressed the basics of everything.”

“So we rebuild then, let’s sort through what we have and see what we can make of it.”

“Where do we begin?”

“Let’s keep on par with total honesty, and share where we are. I still like Ladybug, I’m still happy she’s my partner. I think it’s cool that you’ve been so brave through everything we’ve faced, and it makes sense that it was someone as strong and clever as Marinette working behind that mask. I don’t like knowing that you’re out there getting hurt, but I didn’t like that before either. I don’t want to have secrets in the future, I think we’re building everything from a place of honesty this time, we should continue on that way as well. I think it’s kind of cool that knowing Ladybug so well made it easier to figure out Marinette after spending so long struggling to figure out what she was saying in the past. I’m glad to know that you appreciate me on both sides of the mask because before the reveal, I had doubts about that.”

“Okay, so that being said, I am ultimately glad that you’re my partner, I’m glad that it lets you get away from home and avoid all the rules that come with being Adrien. I can’t think of anybody that would make a better Chat Noir. It really sucks that you sacrifice yourself all the time, but I understand the logic behind it, I just wish you’d be slower to take the opportunity and look for other options first. I do enjoy your puns, they’re just ill-timed as we’re trying to battle and I need to think. To go from 0-100 with vulnerability is a little terrifying, but I hate lying so you can count on me as far as honesty goes. I’m happy that my being Marinette didn’t disappoint you, because I know I’m different from Ladybug. And now that we’ve done all of this, I don’t know what we should be doing next.”

“Well, just as building everything the first time around was something we did a bit each day, rebuilding will also be an everyday process. Everything we brought up today can be addressed as we get to it, and when we do, we’ll make sure we’re being fully honest. It’ll be harder, but there won’t be anything strong enough to break us down. So in order to start building, I think we have to know what we want to become, so we have to figure out where we’re going and keep working in that direction. So what do you want us to be?” 

“I want us to be able to work in sync, and talk about real stuff, and be just as close in and out of the suit,” He made her say it once earlier, he was going to have to say it this time.

“Good, I like that plan. What will others see us as? Alya and Nino’s friends? Are we going to walk into school as friends of our own tomorrow, people who hang out without Alya and Nino? Or some kind of combination or other type of thing?”

“Other kind of sounds good,”

“Ah,” he smiled at her, “and would this other sort of thing by any chance be related to you having been cuddled against my side for the past hour?” Or maybe she’d be saying it again.

“Shut up,” she shoved him, hard, “I was trying to be comforting, we were being really vulnerable, and there was this awkward tension that came with sharing secrets. I wanted you to know I was right here and I wasn’t going anywhere,”

“So it had absolutely nothing to do with having a teen supermodel in your room while completely unsupervised?” He made a show of trying to look unconvinced.

“No, it was more to do with keeping my eyes on an idiot cat who has no control over himself.” Her arms were crossed and she was sticking her tongue out at him. From her newfound standing position, it reminded him of something Ladybug would do. Which would make sense.

He leaned back into the chaise, “see bug, I don’t think this’ll be so bad at all.”

“No, I suppose you’re right.”

“Ha, I’m 1 for 50,000,”

“Oh hush, I tell you when you’re right,” she walked back towards her seat.

He grabbed her hands and pulled her down on top of him, “I don’t seem to recall, you’ll have to remind me,” he teased. 

“Well, there was that one time that, uh…” she trailed off as if she’d come up blank.

“Now you’re just being mean, hasn’t anyone ever taught you not to be mean?”

“It seems not,”

“How tragic, I suppose it’ll be my job then. Now, what would work to teach you a lesson?” He pretended to think about it for a second before lighting up as if he’d had an idea. 

He moved their hands down towards her lap and began leaning down to meet her face. He hesitantly got closer and she was in shock, he was suddenly going to do this, sure they’d been waiting since day 1 for this moment, but it still felt soon. He was getting closer still, so she closed her eyes and leaned forward to meet him. 

She crashed to the floor. 

“I said I was going to teach you a lesson, not reward you,” he laughed as she pouted. “Besides,” he added as he moved down to sit on the floor with her, “I haven’t even asked you to be my girlfriend yet,”

“I don’t know that I’d accept an offer like that from somebody willing to throw me on the floor,” She knew it was written all over her face that she was lying.

“That seems like an unfair standard as I can name a few times a certain yo-yo has dropped me from streetlights, trees, even buildings.” 

“As far as I recall, you were fully suited during each of those.”

“I can still feel it, besides, you fell a whole foot, I’ll make it even,” he jumped back onto her chaise only to immediately fall off. 

“Goof,” she said.

“Yeah, but would you let me be your goof?”

“You think you can handle it?” Her face was really saying yes.

“Probably not,” She knew he was saying yes too.

**Author's Note:**

> “There is one more thing we should discuss. Who has to tell Alya?”
> 
> “Post it online before you leave for school, she won’t have time to detour and she won’t grill you without me, and odds are, I’ll be late to class,” 
> 
> “Genius,”


End file.
